Cast Adrift

Mrs. Bray looked exceedingly hurt and annoyed.

“Threatened,” she went on, “to go to you herself—didn’t want any go-betweens nor brokers. I expected to hear you say that she’d been at your house this morning.”

“Good Gracious! no!” Mrs. Dinneford’s face was almost distorted with alarm.

“It’s the way with all these people,” coolly remarked Mrs. Bray. “You’re never safe with them.”

“Did you hint at her leaving the city?—going to New Orleans, for instance?”

“Oh dear, no! She isn’t to be managed in that way—is deeper and more set than I thought. The fact is, Mrs. Dinneford”—and Mrs. Bray lowered her voice and looked shocked and mysterious—“I’m beginning to suspect her as being connected with a gang.”

“With a gang? What kind of a gang?” Mrs. Dinneford turned slightly pale.

“A gang of thieves. She isn’t the right thing; I found that out long ago. You remember what I said when you gave her the child. I told you that she was not a good woman, and that it was a cruel thing to put a helpless, new-born baby into her hands.”

“Never mind about that.” Mrs. Dinneford waved her hand impatiently. “The baby’s out of her hands, so far as that is concerned. A gang of thieves!”

“Yes, I’m ‘most sure of it. Goes to people’s houses on one excuse and another, and finds out where the silver is kept and how to get in. You don’t know half the wickedness that’s going on. So you see it’s no use trying to get her away.”

Mrs. Bray was watching the face of her visitor with covert scrutiny, gauging, as she did so, by its weak alarms, the measure of her power over her.

“Dreadful! dreadful!” ejaculated Mrs. Dinneford, with dismay.

“It’s bad enough,” said Mrs. Bray, “and I don’t see the end of it. She’s got you in her power, and no mistake, and she isn’t one of the kind to give up so splendid an advantage. I’m only surprised that she’s kept away so long.”

“What’s to be done about it?” asked Mrs. Dinneford, her alarm and distress increasing.

“Ah! that’s more than I can tell,” coolly returned Mrs. Bray. “One thing is certain—I don’t want to have anything more to do with her. It isn’t safe to let her come here. You’ll have to manage her yourself.”

“No, no, no, Mrs. Bray! You mustn’t desert me!” answered Mrs. Dinneford, her face growing pallid with fear. “Money is of no account. I’ll pay ‘most anything, reasonable or unreasonable, to have her kept away.”

And she drew out her pocket-book while speaking. At this moment there came two distinct raps on the door. It had been locked after Mrs. Dinneford’s entrance. Mrs. Bray started and changed countenance, turning her face quickly from observation. But she was self-possessed in an instant. Rising, she said in a whisper,

“Go silently into the next room, and remain perfectly still. I believe that’s the woman now. I’ll manage her as best I can.”

Almost as quick as thought, Mrs. Dinneford vanished through a door that led into an adjoining room, and closing it noiselessly, turned a key that stood in the lock, then sat down, trembling with nervous alarm. The room in which she found herself was small, and overlooked the street; it was scantily furnished as a bed-room. In one corner, partly hid by a curtain that hung from a hoop fastened to the wall, was an old wooden chest, such as are used by sailors. Under the bed, and pushed as far back as possible, was another of the same kind. The air of the room was close, and she noticed the stale smell of a cigar.

A murmur of voices from the room she had left so hastily soon reached her ears; but though she listened intently, standing close to the door, she was not able to distinguish a word. Once or twice she was sure that she heard the sound of a man’s voice. It was nearly a quarter of an hour by her watch—it seemed two hours—before Mrs. Bray’s visitor or visitors retired; then there came a light rap on the door. She opened it, and stood face to face again with the dark-eyed little woman.

“You kept me here a long time,” said Mrs. Dinneford, with ill-concealed impatience.

“No longer than I could help,” replied Mrs. Bray. “Affairs of this kind are not settled in a minute.”

“Then it was that miserable woman?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what did you make out of her?”

“Not much; she’s too greedy. The taste of blood has sharpened her appetite.”

“What does she want?”

“She wants two hundred dollars paid into her hand to-day, and says that if the money isn’t here by sundown, you’ll have a visit from her in less than an hour afterward.”

“Will that be the end of it?”

A sinister smile curved Mrs. Bray’s lips slightly.

“More than I can say,” she answered.

“Two hundred dollars?”

“Yes. She put the amount higher, but I told her she’d better not go for too big a slice or she might get nothing—that there was such a thing as setting the police after her. She laughed at this in such a wicked, sneering way that I felt my flesh creep, and said she knew the police, and some of their masters, too, and wasn’t afraid of them. She’s a dreadful woman;” and Mrs. Bray shivered in a very natural manner.

“If I thought this would be the last of it!” said Mrs. Dinneford as she moved about the room in a disturbed way, and with an anxious look on her face.

“Perhaps,” suggested her companion, “it would be best for you to grapple with this thing at the outset—to take our vampire by the throat and strangle her at once. The knife is the only remedy for some forms of disease. If left to grow and prey upon the body, they gradually suck away its life and destroy it in the end.”

“If I only knew how to do it,” replied Mrs. Dinneford. “If I could only get her in my power, I’d make short works of her.” Her eyes flashed with a cruel light.

“It might be done.”

“How?”

“Mr. Dinneford knows the chief of police.”

The light went out of Mrs. Dinneford’s eyes:

“It can’t be done in that way, and you know it as well as I do.”

Mrs. Dinneford turned upon Mrs. Bray sharply, and with a gleam of suspicion in her face.

“I don’t know any other way, unless you go to the chief yourself,” replied Mrs. Bray, coolly. “There is no protection in cases like this except through the law. Without police interference, you are wholly in this woman’s power.”

Mrs. Dinneford grew very pale.

“It is always dangerous,” went on Mrs. Bray, “to have anything to do with people of this class. A woman who for hire will take a new-born baby and sell it to a beggar-woman will not stop at anything. It is very unfortunate that you are mixed up with her.”

“I’m indebted to you for the trouble,” replied. Mrs. Dinneford, with considerable asperity of manner. “You ought to have known something about the woman before employing her in a delicate affair of this kind.”

“Saints don’t hire themselves to put away new-born babies,” retorted Mrs. Bray, with an ugly gurgle in her throat. “I told you at the time that she was a bad woman, and have not forgotten your answer.”

“What did I answer?”

“That she might be the devil for all you cared!”

“You are mistaken.”